Windows Server 2012

Storage
Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning
Harold Wong

Storage Spaces and Thin Provisioning Overview

Why should I care?
Technology Overview
Demo
Next Steps

Storage Spaces and Thin

Provisioning
Overview

What is Storage Spaces & Thin

Provisioning?
Storage Spaces
New in Windows Server 2012
Provides an in-box storage virtualization that can use low-cost commodity storage devices
Aggregates unallocated space on physical disks installed in or connected to servers through
a pooling model
Can provide a cost-effective platform for business critical storage across a variety of
scenarios
Thin Provisioning
Just-in-Time allocations of storage with the ability to reclaim storage (Trim)
Integrated with Storage Spaces

Storage Spaces and Thin

Provisioning
Why should I care?

Why should I care?

The features of Storage Spaces are designed to meet a variety of challenges in
support of highly-available storage
Storage pools
Can be mapped to combinations of hard disks as well as solid-state drives
(SSDs)
Can be expanded dynamically by simply adding additional drives, thereby
seamlessly scaling to cope with unceasing data growth
Multitenancy
Administration of storage pools can be controlled through access control lists
(ACLs) and delegated on a per-pool basis
Can be fully integrated with Active Directory Domain Services
Resilient storage
Storage Spaces support two optional resiliency modes (mirroring and parity)
Per-pool support for disks that are reserved for replacing failed disks (hot
spares), background scrubbing, and intelligent error correction allow
continuous service availability despite storage component failures

Why should I care? (cont.)

Continuous Availability
Failover clustering integration delivers continuously available service
deployments
One or more pools can be clustered across multiple nodes within a single
cluster. Storage spaces can then be instantiated on individual nodes, and the
storage will seamlessly fail over to a different node when necessary (in response
to failure conditions or due to load balancing)
Integration with CSVs permits scale-out access to data
Optimal storage use through thin provisioning
To allow businesses to easily share storage capacity among multiple unrelated
data sets and thereby maximize capacity use
Trim support permits capacity reclamation when possible
Operational simplicity
Easily managed through the File Services role in Server Manager
Fully remoteable and scriptable management through the Windows Storage
Management API, WMI, and Windows PowerShell
Designed to be compatible with existing backup-restore and cloning tools, as
well as snapshotting infrastructures

Storage Spaces and Thin

Provisioning
Technical Overview

Storage Spaces Requirements

Windows Server 2012
Serial ATA (SATA) or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
connected disks (in an optional just-a-bunch-ofdisks [JBOD] enclosure)
Multinode clustered shared-storage deployments
Two or more servers running Windows Server
2012
Requirements as specified for failover
clustering and Windows CSV
SAS connected JBODs that comply with
Windows Certification requirements

Drive
Type

Stand-Alone Clustered
File Servers File Servers

SATA

Supported

SCSI

Supported

iSCSI

Supported

Supported

SAS

Supported

Supported

USB

Supported

The criterion for determining which drives are eligible to be part of a Pool are:
Minimum drive size is 10 GB
Drive is empty, i.e. no partition data exists on the drive
Drive is not assigned to any other pool
The Primordial Pool will consist of Physical Disks that are not assigned to
any existing Storage Pool

How does Storage Spaces Work?

An example

Process of Handling Resources

Storage Spaces
Management Interface

Configuring a Storage Pool

Creating a Storage Space

(Virtual Disk)

Data Redundancy in
Storage Spaces
Redundancy
Type

Description

Simple

Data is striped across physical disks

Maximizes capacity
Increases throughput

Mirror

Data is duplicated on two or three physical disks

Increases reliability
Reduces capacity by 50 to 66 percent

Parity

Data and parity information are striped across physical disks

Increases reliability
Reduces capacity by 13 to 33 percent

Deduplication
Capacity Optimization
Scale and Performance
Reliability and Data Integrity

Managing Storage with PowerShell

PowerShell is required to access many of the advanced
features afforded by the new Storage Management
application programming interface (API)
Example: New-StoragePool
Parameters configured with GUI and PowerShell
Underlying storage pool name
Virtual disk name
Resiliency setting (Simple, Mirror, or parity)
Provisioning type (Thin or Fixed)
Virtual disk size
Parameters configured only with PowerShell
Number of columns: the number of columns the
virtual disk contains
Number of data copies - number of complete
copies of data that can be maintained
Disk interleave - number of bytes forming a stripe
Physical disks to use - specific disks to use in the
virtual disk

Integrating Storage Pools

with Failover Clustering
Clustered Storage Spaces require
fixed provisioning
Clustered virtual disks require
underlying hardware to support
persistent reservations

Thin Provisioning and Trim

Requirements

Enabled by default in Windows Server 2012

Storage infrastructure that complies with the certification that is required for Windows Server
2012
Standards-compliant hardware for identification

Capabilities

Identification
Windows Server 2012 uses a standardized method to detect and identify thinly
provisioned virtual disks
Notification
When configured physical storage use thresholds are reached, Windows Server 2012
notifies the administrator through events; events can be used for automated actions by
sophisticated management applications, such as Microsoft System Center
Optimization
Windows Server 2012 provides a new API that lets applications return storage when it is
no longer needed.
NTFS issues trim notifications in real time when appropriate.
Trim notifications are issued as part of storage consolidation (optimization), which is
performed regularly on a scheduled basis

Storage Spaces and

Thin Provisioning
DEMO

Understanding and Troubleshooting Storage Spaces

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29002

System Center 2012 Evaluation Download

http://aka.ms/hwsc2012

Windows Server 2012 Product Download

http://aka.ms/hwws2012

Microsoft Virtual Academy

http://aka.ms/virtualacademy

Windows Server 2012 Virtual Labs

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/hh968267.aspx